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Praise Be To Those Who Compulsively Keep Records

I have been forever slightly apologetic for my propensity to write lists, scribble notes, jot in journals, and hoard them–and any such items from previous generations. But as I grow into my wise crone stage I have realized a life truth– genealogists and historians love this stuff. I am becoming both as I melt into my next life role of family storyteller. Soon loved ones will appreciate the fact that my compulsive collecting is leading TO some story, some tale.

Today’s tidbit is a data byte from the digital records of Goshen Baptist Church, Whitely, Greene County, Pennsylvania. Praise the original members for keeping minutes! Praise the member who transcribed them for a digital public!!

The Minor family has been in Greene County, Pennsylvania a long time. I am descended from that branch through Samuel, son of Stephen, brother to John, the father of Greene County. Samuel married an Ann Tindall and apparently raised his family in New Jersey while his brothers settled in the wilds of the Monongalia, Yohogania and Ohio Counties that became pieces of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. By 1820 though Samuel’s descendants were in Greene County; I have primary documents to prove it. So when did this branch remove from New Jersey to Pennsylvania?

Goshen Baptist Church records hold a clue, praise the data trail! In 1798 Samuel’s son Abia Minor, with wife Margaret Pearson Minor, were accepted into the church by letter of dismission from Hughestown, New Jersey.

And that is all. But that is everything.

It gives a target date for the Greene County arrival of Abia and Margaret and my great to the third-grandfather, John Pearson. It leads me to understand that John P. Minor was but a seven year old boy when he left the relative civility of New Jersey for the wilds of Pennsylvania, sharing his play space with panthers and bears. It lets me identify more accurately the census information of that early American era, recognizing an Abia Minor as being MY Abia Minor rather than another branch’s Abia Minor.